Tuesday, March 5, 2013

A letter to your child

A
letter to your child can become the most valuable gift.

Especially as children advance to the teen years, they suffer more and more assaults on their potential to achieve. Parents worry about the many different things that may happen to their child, but achievement in school is usually central. How do you motivate your
child?

A simple letter to your child can, over the years, evolve to be the most important message one human can give to
another. It serves as evidence of the parental concern that helps secure and motivate a child.

In
your letter tell your child of your dreams for them, what you hope
they achieve in life. Include family history and stories you want
your child to remember. Remember, this letter may eventually be shared by them with their own children and grandchildren. It can help them
better understand their roots, where and who they came from. It represents that important connection to history.

Some
schools have projects to encourage such letters. They archive these priceless letters for a decade in a 500-pound, vault bolted to the floor in the school lobby, the school time-capsule. That is what the School Archive Project, covered on this blog, does. But do not
wait for such a project in your child's school to write your letter. Each child should
always have such a letter from each parent in their scrap book or
photo album. Additional letters should be written every few years, even annually if possible.Community leaders around the nation, including Mayor Mike Rawlings here in Dallas, are struggling with efforts to improve community
mental health. The costs for failure in this area are monumental. But, for each person to write such a simple letter to each
of their children is a major step in the direction of improving
community mental health. The discussion of what really matters in life will happen more often. The simple writing of a letter, and the reading of it, will help increase the frequency of those priceless parent/child conversations about life. A child familiar with
such a focus always does better in school. They can more easily deal
with the challenges we all face in life.